04/13/2011

As early as last year after the Summer for Marriage Tour, NOM had the idea of assembling a special team of particularly homophobic propagandistsdedicated supporters, which I lightly touched upon discussing NOM’s illusion of support. The task of this team is to do the work NOM doesn’t want to do or officially engage in. Let me give an example.

A couple of months ago, Elton John publicly changed his opinion on same-sex marriage and came out supporting marriage equality. Naturally, NOM wanted to go after him for his change of heart but “due to Elton John supporters and various other reasons” NOM decided not “to push the story” officially.

However, NOM’s secret online propaganda team was instructed to “make [Elton John's change of heart] public in a more suitable way” to allow NOM to covertly attack the pop legend in a way that would officially leave them out of the fray. It was important to NOM to create the illusion that Elton John’s change of heart naturally spurred a public backlash when all the while it was NOM pulling the strings from above.

In exchange for their propaganda work, NOM is offering rewards.

As part of my job with NOM, I was instructed to create a point system to reward the propagandists. Everything they do will be tracked and NOM plans to reward them. In the future, when this team gets off the ground, NOM intends to use the technology behind Mr. Brown’s ActRight conservative activism website to facilitate tracking, create a competitive atmosphere between the propagandists and allow them to redeem the points they earn in a variety of ways, including lunch with Mr. Brown himself.FULL PIECE: NOM is developing a secret online propaganda team [Louis Marinelli]

Currently, NOM’s remaining social media team, managed under Opus Fidelis, is working to develop the technology they need to deploy this secret online propaganda team. Central to the idea is to develop a plan that will “keep [the team] motivated in the long-term,” and the project’s head, David Lejeune, emphasized that the team would have “to be filtered so there is no risk of a leak.”

Some other names we know to be associated with Opus/ this online outreach in general:

*ALSO: In his piece, Louis identifies one of these underground voices with the initials S.N. He's obviously referring to Serena Nino, a prolific Facebooker who routinely fills the NOM F'book with overheated comments about gays.